Salesforce.com close to buying Buddy Media for more than $800 mn

Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company is close to buying Buddy Media, the five-year-old company that helps brands manage their presence on social networking sites, for more than $800 million, All Things Digital yesterday reported, citing people familiar with the deal.
 
The technology website said that both companies have agreed to the $800 million deal, and Buddy Media chose Salesforce's offer over a competitive bid from Internet giant Google.
 
New York-based privately owned Buddy Media provides brands and agencies a management platform for social networking. The company helps big brands navigate through social networking sites like Facebook Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

The company founded by Michael Lazero in 2007 has reportedly raised $90 million from investors including Roger Ehrenberg, Softbank Capital, European Founders Fund, Greycroft Partners, Ron Conway and Bay Partners.

Investors had valued the company at $500 million during its recent round of funding in August 2011.

San Francisco, California-based Salesforce.com is best known for its customer relationship management (CRM) product. Its cloud-based CRM software provides sales representatives with a complete customer profile and account history, allows the user to manage marketing campaign spending and performance across a variety of channels from a single application, tracks all opportunity-related data, decision makers, customer communications, and any other information unique to the company's sales process.

The company has grown through aggressive acquisitions to reach more than $1.65 billion in revenue last year.